


Tea For Two, Minus One, Plus One

by archea2



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, Humor, M/M, Oblivious Winchesters (Supernatural), Pining Sam Winchester, Sibling Incest, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27401746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: “Dean… buys your tea?”“Never tell him to his face if you want to live,” Sam says. He turns to fill the electric kettle and put the water on to boil. “But yeah, he does.” Andyeahlights up Sam’s face, an eraser taken to the tiny, near-invisible smudges and bruises stamped across it by years of Sam’s vocational line of trade.
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 118





	Tea For Two, Minus One, Plus One

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the nonny with whom I had a recent chat about Sam's tea routine.

Castiel shows up on a Thursday. Sam has a joke ready on the tip of his tongue, but Castiel is looking a bit frazzled at the cuffs and Sam settles for “Tea?”.

Castiel’s brow frazzles up. “You,” he says, “don’t drink tea.”

“Depends if _you_ is plural and Dean in the close surroundings.” And Sam smiles, his cheeks warmed by the crease. “In which case he’ll fake hay fever. Or call us Gran. But he’s scoping out a local case, so we’re good.”

“In this case,” says Cas gravely, “I would enjoy a cup of tea.” 

It is all the same, really - tea, coffee, even the hot water and orange flower blossom (plus a touch of honey) that he once told Sam is all the rage in Lebanon - well, the other Lebanon. His vessel’s taste buds might tell them apart; Castiel’s seraphic brain can, but the distance between this limitless faculty and his vessel’s taste buds is inexorable. Still, he can smell tea. And is now being informed that Sam Winchester, kitchen hazard extraordinaire (Dean), brews a mean cup. Or that’s what he says. It’s beyond Castiel’s limitless understanding why Sam, who likes tea, would call his cup mean, unless the cup’s malevolence lies in tempting Sam to fill it too many times before bedtime. Father Knows Best and all, but Castiel never quite saw the point of bladders, and - 

“ _Cas_! Black or green?”

“Oh,” says Cas, startled out of his anatomical musings. “Green. If you have any.”

Standing in Dean Winchester’s kitchen, he is trying to be a realist.

“Well, I think we’re out of Sencha, but if I scour the back corners… here we are. Green Earl Grey!”

“That’s a contradiction in terms,” Castiel informs Sam’s back as the latter continues to rummage.

“And Dean was on a milk run yesterday, so I bet… yes! Oh, and it’s Hyson. Ol’ reliable - just the thing.”

While a beaming Sam retrieves the packs, Castiel stands by the kitchen table parsing his last sentence. There’s something here - not unlike the softest brush of a feather tickling his cosmic understanding of man - a clue gloved in a name pursed in a sentence tucked in Sam’s relaxed candor, that requires more parsing.

“Dean… buys your tea?”

“Never tell him to his face if you want to live,” Sam says. He turns to fill the electric kettle and put the water on to boil. “But yeah, he does.” And _yeah_ lights up Sam’s face, an eraser taken to the tiny, near-invisible smudges and bruises inscribed across it by years of Sam’s vocational line of trade. At this moment he looks radiant. Looks, Castiel thinks, the square root of domestic content. He lets Sam fetch two mugs, one plain, one with a scarily wide-eyed child in a blue dress and pinafore. 

“Dean’s Christmas gift,” he explains, still grinning. “He riles me to no end - calls me Miss Marple when we’re on a case and Alice at home. And then calls himself a grunt. He reads, you know? Not all evenings, the porn still gets precedence. Sugar?”

Along the years, Castiel has learnt to keep up with the Winchester customary streak of talk. “No, thank you, Sam.”

“Sweetener, then.” And Sam sets the container on the table. The bunker’s kitchen, in itself a rather saturnine affair dating back to the Age of Bakelite, is looking cosier by the minute. It’s easy enough to picture Sam and Dean sharing a meal there, their long legs battling for dominance under the kitchen table while their elbows follow suit on the tabletop. “Though Dean's never let me live it down. “I’m home, Sweetie! Ready to go, Sweetums? Pass the beer, Sweetheart!” And look who’s talking - if anyone has a sweet tooth in this family…” 

“So Dean has proved a regular tea-hyphen-esse-ee.”

Sam’s eyebrows do this thing when they try to find an upward exit out of his brow.

“That was banter,” Cas elaborates. He has been practising quips and sallies ever since getting an open invite to consider himself a proxy species of Winchesters. So far, so uphill, but Cas is not one to renounce a quest.

Sam glances at his unperturbed face and chuckles. “Nice,” he says. “And, yeah, he is. On the surface. But he’s the one that’s bought me tea since... well, since forever. Dad was a java man through and through. Liked his coffee the way he liked his car - dark, strong, kicks ass and stays longtime.”

He pauses to pour. The hot water floods the two mugs, inducing the Archimedes-old displacement of the teabag fatally conducive to a soaked label and burnt fingers when the latter skim the too-hot water to fish it out. Sam, being Sam, uses a spoon.

“And Dean takes after him. And I can take it. But we were in and out of that car, all the time, and it all began to blur - the road coffee that smelled like tar, and the car that smelled of cold dregs whenever Dad left his cup longtime in the holder. When I grew contrary, that’s when I took to tea. Tea meant staying put long enough that I could go through a pack, one bag a day.”

“And Dean got it.”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I never forgot. How he’d pinch and scrape to buy me some cheap stuff and then hide it in a corner like he still does, Easter-hunt-wise, and pretend it had been left by the previous renter. And I’d know, and he’d know I knew, so it became our secret. And he’d faux barf at the smell and ask if I’d boil the sock I’d just -” Sam censors himself in time - “and I’d pull a face and watch his grin back, kind of exultant. I would sit and bask in the tea, and let my head feel swirled, kind of, at him channeling that ease, that warmth, straight from mine.”

Slowly, his tea forgotten, Castiel leans forward. It’s like Sam’s face has been made tender by the haze of steam rising from the water, its yellow-gold clouding up under the ceiling lights. The Winchesters are both good men and true; but Sam is the good man still in need of confession. Even when he does not think of calling it like Cas sees it.

“Even when I was with Jess, I’d think back to these times. She bought her tea loose, which is the proper thing to do, because the antioxydant ratio is far better, but I missed the bags. Sometimes I went and bought some - Gunpowder. Um, yeah. And she’d rag me about it, but I never told her. Just like I never told Dean about the loose leaf before, ‘cause he couldn’t afford it.” Sam stops, sips; glances at Castiel above the rim of his mug, half unsure. Castiel just looks on.

“It took some time before he got back to it. Motels don’t exactly favour tea drinkers. So I had to coax him back into it. First it was iced tea. Then we got this home of ours. This I bought” - Sam points at the plain mug - “to let him know. How much I missed it. Us. The… the staying, the warmth of staying, the closeness. Yeah, the closeness.”

Castiel looks on.

“Hey, wanna know a fun fact?” Sam leans across the table, propping his chin between his upturned fists. “They use green tea to tone down freckles. Saw it in a pharmacy, stocking up on painkillers. But I’d never tell Dean. Fuck, no. They… actually, they kind of glow, when he’s sitting right where you are, only you’d have to be leaning too, quite a bit.”

Castiel looks on.

“Hey. Hey, um, sorry, didn’t mean to keep you from your cup.” Sam leans back again, just as a faint roar coalesces into a close roar: the return of the prodigal car. “Or drown you in memories.”

Cas stands up; leaves his cup, still warm and full to the brim, behind Dean’s chair. “Memories. Yes. Can I trade one with you, Sam?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Eden. Year 1 B. F. F.”

Sam blinks his _uh_. “... Best friend forever?”

“Before the Freakin’ Fall,” Cas edits. Back in Heaven Gabriel had had his own dating system, one that caught on. “Eve was just like you. She loved nothing more than to boil fig leaves, and Adam loved nothing more than to gather them for her.”

Sam looks on.

“Of course, that was before they moved on to fornication.” 

Boots are heard waking up the stairs’ clank with gusto. Sam looks on.

“Tell Dean I left his cup untouched,” says Cas, kindly, and flutters himself out. 

Good men and true, both of them. But not above a reminder that it’s never good to simmer a brew longtime. Reach boiling point, yes, but then pour it out, pour it all - liberate the hidden flavour that only ever asked to blossom - and (most importantly) drink hot. You’re welcome, Sam Winchester.


End file.
